Helen Tanner, Founder, Data3
Helen Tanner is the founder of Data3 – the award-winning data lab that helps businesses to make & save more money using data they already have. Helen is a data fanatic born into the corporate world, before setting up Data3 in 2017. Data3 does magic with data, from untangling data complexity, connecting disconnected data, and creating a single source of truth… to creating cool visualisations, to powering predictive models, to AI. Data3 work in the UK, Europe, New Zealand & Australia helping high-growth, ambitious organisations to grow even faster using data. BoomBoard – the all-in-one business dashboard – is their data product designed for startups and scaleups.
As part of our ongoing celebration of International Women’s Day, we sat down with senior leaders from our community to ask them how they found themselves in the world of data, and what advice they have for others.
How and Why did you get into the Data industry?
Helen started as a coder but admits she was spectacularly rubbish at it. However, during her corporate career in marketing, she kept coming up with ideas of using data to add more value to customers and generate more revenue. In time, she grew tired of helping global organisations to make even more money, so decided her time was much better spent helping small businesses to use big business data toys. Helen founded Data3 in 2017 and the business has successfully delivered 100+ data projects for 50+ businesses, as a business, they enable businesses to check on their performance like they’d check on the weather.
What advice would you give to a college or Uni leaver considering a career in Data?
Helen says with enthusiasm, there’s no doubt about it, choosing a career in data is a smart move. She admits we’re working in a world where there’s a growing awareness of the value of data for global organisations, yet there aren’t enough people skilled in data, so there’s more demand than supply and therefore massive wage inflation. Helen’s big tip is if you want to choose a career with longevity, and decent salaries, where you’ll always be in demand – choose a career in data.
But where do you start? Helens usually recommends people who are new to technology to start with Microsoft Power BI which is a tool you can use to create dashboards – https://powerbi.microsoft.com/. Of all the data tools, this one is the most prolific, it’s free to get started, and there are loads of free self-training options.
Why not start learning with Data3 online training videos?
How has being a female leader impacted your journey within the data industry?
Helen doesn’t think of herself as a female leader – just your everyday leader!
What could be done better in the Data industry to attract more females to a career in Data?
Helen Tanner celebrates that they’re receiving more and more applicants from talented, female data experts, so it’s changing. Helen states that she thinks there needs to be the promotion of the varied roles that are available in the data world as they are so diverse – from data consultants to data architects to data engineers to data visualisers to data scientists, through to data protection officers. Data roles are diverse. So people working in these data roles need to be diverse.
Tahanee Twist
Tahanee is an accomplished principal talent partner with us here at Orbition. With years of experience in the industry, she has developed a reputation as a skilled and trusted advisor to both clients and candidates.
In her role as principal talent partner, Tahanee is responsible for managing key client relationships and ensuring the delivery of high-quality talent solutions. She works closely with clients to understand their business needs and culture, and develops customized strategies that meet their specific requirements Read more.
